"Beep!": for guests such as cashier hosts and hostesses, the barcode is now a sound. Every day in the world, these vertical lines of various thicknesses are scanned 6 billion times. 70,000 products that go through checkout every second.

Another staggering statistic: a medium-sized French brand like Système U (4th largest retailer in France with 11.6% of the market share and nearly 1,700 stores) reported having recorded 523 million checkouts in 2022.

Inventory management, transport, traceability... The barcode, a real "product ID", "also allows professionals in store to have access to other functionalities," Laurence Vallana, France director of SES-Imagotag, a company specializing in electronic labeling, told AFP.

Fruit chewing gum

If the barcode was initially patented by the Americans Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in 1952, it was really perfected and marketed only from 1971 under the impetus of the American engineer George Laurer.

And on April 3, 1973, the barcode became, after consultations between major manufacturers and distributors, the system used to identify the consumer products they would exchange in the decades to come. It will later be known as EAN-13 for "European Article Number" and 13 as the number of digits it contains.

50 years of the UPC © Nalini barcode LEPETIT-CHELLA / AFP

The first item to be scanned with its barcode, on June 26, 1974 in Ohio, was a packet of fruit chewing gum, now on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington.

Today, the Global Standard 1 (GS1) organization - "neutral and non-profit", with two million member companies, including 53,000 in France - is responsible for the global standardization of product identification.

It issues for each product of each company that requests it, from Coca-Cola to a cheese producer, a unique identification code, the "global trade item number", which will then be translated into barcodes. Each company must pay a contribution correlated to its turnover, from 98 euros to 4,400 euros per year.

Go game and rap album

And a small revolution is emerging, explained to AFP Renaud de Barbuat and Didier Veloso, respectively CEO of GS1 Monde and president of GS1 France: by 2027, the barcode will indeed "bow out" and "give way to the new standard developed by the organization" under QR Code.

If the barcode has reminded some artists, critics of overconsumption or globalization, of the bars of a prison, the appearance of the QR Code can recall the game of Go: it is this game of Chinese origin that, with its combinations of black and white dots arranged on a square, inspired its creator in 1994, the Japanese Masahiro Hara.

The barcode, a commercial food identification system, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023 © GEORGES GOBET / AFP/Archives

QR Code stands for Quick Response Code and its advantage over barcodes is that it can integrate much more information, for example the composition of the product, which is essential for recycling.

Its strengths: "capture more product information, share an infinity of digital content", or "create new uses accessible to all, especially consumers", summarizes GS1. Some brands already add these codes to their products allowing customers to learn more about their manufacture or characteristics.

This gesture was widely democratized at the time of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Like the barcode before it, the QR Code was quickly diverted from its economic use, used by artists, as on the cover of the album "V" by French rapper Vald, or recently deployed as a banner in a stadium stand by ultras supporters of Paris Saint-Germain ...

Applied to consumer products, GS1 believes that the QR Code will be "a great tool to develop the circular economy", including recycling, reuse, reuse.

Let the nostalgic barcode be reassured: "the 13 small numbers to identify a product will remain," says GS1. The transition will be smooth.

© 2023 AFP